The Education of Brainiac

Born in New York City and raised in Puerto Rico and Queens, New York, David Lapin led Community Music Center of Boston, one of the nation's largest and oldest community schools of the arts, from 1983 until 2017. In that capacity, he served on the boards of the Boston Annenberg Challenge, the Boston Center for the Arts, the National Guild for Community Arts Education, and numerous city task forces on arts education. He is a past president of the National Guild, a former member of the Walnut Hill School for the Arts Board of Visitors and the school quality review team for Boston Arts Academy, the city's high school for the arts. A member of the Harvard Musical Association (HMA), Lapin holds a Ph.D. in political science from Yale University, and has taught at Yale and Cornell. Lapin has also served on many diverse panels for HMA, Berklee College of Music, Longy School of Music of Bard College, the Massachusetts Cultural Council and the New England Conservatory. He has been an advisor to The Learning Project in Boston's Back Bay and Jamaica Plain's Eliot School of Fine Arts. He continues to serve on the advisory board for EdVestors Arts Education Fund and the Vestry of Beacon Hill's historic Church of the Advent, where he chairs the Administration Committee. He also chairs HMA's Achievement Awards Committee.